


Bucharest (2016)

by monicawoe



Series: How They Make You a Weapon [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Dogs, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-23 05:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9642575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/pseuds/monicawoe
Summary: Bucky finds a stray dog in Bucharest.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a thank you gift for thigm0taxis who wanted a HTMYAW fic where something nice happens to Bucky (amidst copious angst).

Every morning, just after seven, they start unloading the truck. Always the same two men; they work well together, movements quick and natural—the kind of synchronicity that only comes from years of practice. But there are only two of them, and nobody else around, not this early in the day. When they open the rear door of the grocery store and wheel in the first stack of pallets, there's nobody left guarding the truck.

You grab what's within easy reach from the boxes of bulk snack items: a half-dozen Hanuta wafers and five bags of beef jerky, shove them into your pockets and the inside of your jacket, zipping it up a little higher as you walk away. Your ball-cap acts as a shield from the glare of the morning sun, but, more than that, it covers your face from view sufficiently.

The delivery men have never caught sight of you, nor will you let them. But there are others that aren't as easy to evade: Hydra, SHIELD, Interpol and every agency in between. They're all looking for you. They've been trying to find you since the day the helicarriers fell, the day you pulled _him_ from the water. The day you remembered who you used to be just long enough to escape your captivity.

You take a new path back to your hiding place; never the same route twice. But there aren't enough streets to change up the last few turns, and traveling from rooftop to rooftop this time of morning draws far more attention than walking slowly at street level. So you keep your pace casual, chin tucked down, eyes focused on the sidewalk, peripheral vision taking in everything else. They're looking for you and they've gotten close a few times, but not here in Bucharest. Not yet. Nearly two weeks without a tail. And you intend to keep it that way.

There's a sound from the alleyway. You pause, listening for more, but the noises are erratic and tentative. It could be a rat, a tin can, a drunk, or a pocket of wind caught in the valley between the two apartment buildings.

The sound never stops completely, only quiets a bit—from sharper, shorter bursts of rattling metal to a soft snuffle—distinctly animal. Canine. You round the alley, footsteps silent. The dog is large but wiry, skinny from a life spent living on scraps. He's rummaging through the garbage; body bent over one of the bigger trash bins. Seconds later he turns his head and drops a few chicken bones on the ground.

You walk closer, drawn by curiosity more than anything else. You've seen animals before, you're sure of it—even encountered interference from unexpected wildlife on past missions. But animals—of the natural, unmutated variety—were no threat to Hydra, so they were never a concern of yours.

An older memory surfaces—dampened and smudged by the cauterized neural pathways in your brain, but there nonetheless—the feel of a cool nose nuzzling against the palm of your hand, the stink of wet fur, a wagging tail; your heart stutters for a beat as you struggle to try to place the moment. But you can't, so you let it drift away again, too familiar with the frustration and pain of trying to assemble puzzle pieces that were burned to ash decades ago. Sometimes, they come back on their own later—in your dreams, under the steady stream of cold water from the shower, or in the middle of exercise drills, but they never come back when you try to force them.

The dog's head lifts, ears perked, haunches tensed. He's noticed you—by scent or sound, despite your caution. You stay where you are, consciously loosen your stance, letting your shoulders and hands drop. Slowly, you reach into your pocket and work a bag of beef jerky open with one hand. The plastic crackles, sending the dog's ears twitching again. His breath quickens and he lifts his snout, scenting the air.

You crouch down low and hold out the strip of meat, and once all his attention is focused, throw the jerky his way. He snatches it in mid-air, retreating a few steps, until his legs hit the closest trash bin.

Dog appeased, you scan the piles of larger refuse, and begin to extract what you need. Three more cinderblocks, a cracked wooden spoon, an empty coffee tin.

The dog finishes wolfing down the beef jerky, and watches you, guard lowered, but not completely gone. You pull another strip of meat from the bag and toss it over.

He eats it slower this time, eyes still on you, but body more relaxed. You move to the neat stack of wood in the corner and search for suitable planks. It's being used to renovate the less decrepit of the two buildings, in theory, but the material has been sitting untouched for weeks.

You clamp the wooden planks under your arm, shove the spoon in your pocket, and stack the cinderblocks in between your forearms. The coffee can will have to wait. The back-entrance door opens easily with a shove from your hip. The lock you broke won't be replaced anytime soon; the building is condemned.

You're halfway down the hall before you hear the click-clacking of the dog's claws behind you. For a moment, you pause—it'd be smarter to chase him off. You can't give him all of the jerky. Well maybe you could. There's still a package of potato flips and three boxes of oats upstairs, but you've been craving protein, no matter how heavily smoked and dried.

"I'll give you water, but that's it." His tail wags in response, and he follows a few steps behind you.

#

 

The dog leaves during the course of the evening, presumably to relieve himself after the three bowls of water he drank. He comes trotting back in a few minutes later, and you're surprised by just how much that comforts you.

As you work through your last set of push-ups, the dog curls up next to your newly assembled shelving, head resting on his front paws, watching you. His fur is nearly the same shade as the wood.

Set complete, you head to the sink for a glass of water; on your way out of the kitchen, you grab the strips of jerky you saved for him and drop them by his feet. He slings them down and rests his head again. It looks almost like he's smiling.

Exhausted, you settle onto the mattress in the corner with one of the notebooks you've been writing in. You try to write in it every day. Sometimes you fill a whole page—sometimes you manage only one word. But it helps. The act of writing itself seems to pull on the parts of your mind you'd thought were lost—the parts that make you _you_ and not what Hydra forced you to become. There's a difference, a big difference, though the distinctions aren't always clear.

You skip past the tagged sections at the front of the book, the ones where you've written everything you remember about _him_ , about _Steve_ , turning to a blank page in the middle instead. _I had a dog once,_ you write and pause, trying to remember details—anything at all—the color of fur, the shape of the ears...but instead you remember the smell of something sweet baking, an apron covered in flour and a woman's voice saying, " _Dogs can always tell the good from the bad. They know who to trust._ " Jotting those words down doesn't bring anything else to the surface, but it's something at least, whether remembered, or imagined. It feels real enough.

In moments like this, the emptiness of your deleted past is palpable—like a phantom limb; other days your brain aches with unwelcome memories—so clear, so _horrific_ you long for the stillness of forgetting.

Writing helps you remember, and keeps the memories from crumbling away again. You record them all, the good and the bad, because they're all a part of you. But the worst ones don't fade from your mind, they _cling_ to you with the cloying stench of death and the sharp sounds of bullets, the distinct duet of hissing blade and gurgling throat—they follow you down as you drift asleep, unfolding endlessly: death upon death, decade upon decade. Your dreams are purgatory and you give yourself over to them, let them teach you all you did, everything you have to answer for—even when it's too much to bear.

_The bullets hit; the targets fall. One, two, three. The extraction point is half a mile away, crucial for a discreet operation such as this. The side-streets hugging the plaza are empty this time of night, except for a small building with the lights still on: a woodworker's shop. He opens the back-door, with a pipe in his mouth and a trash pail in hand and looks you over. The mission parameters were very clear. No witnesses. No one must see you._

_He dies quietly, but his pipe clatters as it skitters across the cobblestone, and the trash-can makes a racket, rolling to a stop against the side of the building. You duck inside the wood shop seconds before the neighbors poke their heads out of their windows, drawn by the commotion. A minute passes, and another, and then you hear a softer, higher pitched voice from behind you._

Your heart thunders awake before the rest of you, and you sit up, clawing at your throat, trying to release the pressure squeezing it closed as tightly as a vice. Your metal fingers feel just as cold as the chair's unforgiving steel.

World spinning as your consciousness tries to orient itself, you sit up on hands and knees, push yourself to your feet, lurching a few steps before you reach the doorframe to the bathroom. The door itself is missing, torn off its hinges your first night here.

The porcelain feels cool beneath your right hand. You cling to it, heaving as another wave of terror and revulsion hits. The chemical undercurrent to this sickness hasn't lessened much, even though you've been out of Hydra's reach for months. Which means that whatever they were giving you isn't out of your system yet. Not entirely. Either that, or somehow, they're still giving you something. Maybe there's another implant you haven't found—another sub-dermal pouch of time-release drugs; just enough to throw you off balance. Just enough to make you weak, to make a part of you long for the relief of the chair, of forgetting.

But you don't deserve to forget. The memories are yours, and if they don't kill you first, you'll have to find a way to live with them. Either way, they're yours, and their violence is only fitting.

Your body shivers as you make your way back to the mattress. Part of you wants water, but you've tried that before and it always makes things worse. Laying down makes it worse, too. So you sit on the floor, bare back pressed against the ice-cold wall of the apartment. It's sobering—painfully so, and you focus on it, focus on the cold against your skin and the clarity it brings. And you were well trained _for so many years_ that just the feel of it, the sensation of ice, is enough to even out your heartbeat, to slow it down. Cold is peace, cold is quiet, cold is inevitable. There's no use fighting it, you tried and tried and failed and failed. There's no beating the cold. And when you wake you won't remember, when you wake you won't know.

Something warm nudges against your hand. The dog's soft fur passes through your fingers as he presses up against you and settles by your right side, head resting on your lap.

And you have to stop yourself from crying out in anguish, because you were so close—so close to forgetting—so close to letting go. But there's warmth next to you, a small heart thumping against your leg, furry ears beneath your fingers, and they remind you that you're alive—that you're real and you're free and that's terrifying, more terrifying than anything else you've endured because you _don't know what to do_. You don't even know who you _are_. You're a patchwork-man in body and mind, Hydra's will grafted on you inside and out; insidious thoughts and indestructible steel. They made you kill, but they didn't make you a killer, that much you know. That was in you long before.

The dog lifts his head and looks up at you, eyes glinting in the darkness. You raise your hand slowly, without making a sound, and let him sniff your fingers before lifting them higher to scratch behind his ears. And he doesn't flinch. He's not afraid of you. He trusts you.

The pain recedes gradually, condensing itself into a small tight ball lodged in your throat. But it's bearable. It's the most peaceful you've felt in months.

And hours later, when the sun streams in through the newspaper-covered windows, you open your eyes. The dog's fur looks golden in the sunlight, and he's still asleep, paws twitching softly as he dreams. Your eyes fall shut again and your mind is quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed the read, please consider reblogging [on tumblr](http://monicawoe.tumblr.com/post/157039944248/bucharest-2016-monicawoe-captain-america)


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